4 ms·

> It really isn’t Apple’s fault if someone else is producing bad files that they happened to previously tolerate, especially if that somebody isn’t maintaining

> It really isn’t Apple’s fault if someone else is producing bad files that they happened to previously tolerate, especially if that somebody isn’t maintaining their software. I think it is. Preview used to correctly handle the thing, and now it doesn't. Users cannot be expected to inspect the raw PS code of their PDFs to determine standards compliance. What they can do is assume that something that works yesterday, and appears to work today, is in fact working. The PDFs didn't change, the application did. It's the application's fault. If you have compatible behavior that you remove, it's on you to alert the user of the reduced functionality.

zepto 6y ago
Yes, it is in principle possible that Apple was doing something special to support bad PDFs produced by ABBY which they then removed. If this is what happened, I would agree with you. But, there is no evidence yet that they removed anything. It’s quite possible (I’d say likely) that ABBY’s PDFs were corrupt all along. Preview may have tolerated them not because of a special feature which was then removed, but because it happened not to depend on correctness before. In this case, Apple wouldn’t have been in a position to even know about the problem. You know who would? ABBY, who have had free access to Big Sur for months. You’d think that even cursory testing at their end would have shown this problem. They have had months to fix it, months to work with Apple on the issue, any months to publicize it it really is Apple’s fault.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  The trouble is the PDF specification is vague and ambiguous in a number of areas. This has resulted in a lot of ill formed documents. If you are going to write a PDF reader then you are going to have to accept those documents and not corrupt them. Even if ABBY does have a bug and fixes it then people will still have a bunch of older documents they will want to read.
  - zepto 6y ago
    This is mostly accurate, however it is an idealization to suggest that you can accept and not corrupt all of the ill-formed documents. This is in principle impossible. If it turns out that there is a widespread problem with many kinds of document that no longer work properly, I’ll be more inclined to say Apple is at fault. But as it stands, it just seems like ABBY has been producing bad PDFs.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I’m sure Apple had much more time with ABBY than ABBY had with Big Sur ;)

zepto 6y ago

Yes, it is in principle possible that Apple was doing something special to support bad PDFs produced by ABBY which they then removed. If this is what happened, I would agree with you. But, there is no evidence yet that they removed anything. It’s quite possible (I’d say likely) that ABBY’s PDFs were corrupt all along. Preview may have tolerated them not because of a special feature which was then removed, but because it happened not to depend on correctness before. In this case, Apple wouldn’t have been in a position to even know about the problem. You know who would? ABBY, who have had free access to Big Sur for months. You’d think that even cursory testing at their end would have shown this problem. They have had months to fix it, months to work with Apple on the issue, any months to publicize it it really is Apple’s fault.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
The trouble is the PDF specification is vague and ambiguous in a number of areas. This has resulted in a lot of ill formed documents. If you are going to write a PDF reader then you are going to have to accept those documents and not corrupt them. Even if ABBY does have a bug and fixes it then people will still have a bunch of older documents they will want to read.
- zepto 6y ago
  This is mostly accurate, however it is an idealization to suggest that you can accept and not corrupt all of the ill-formed documents. This is in principle impossible. If it turns out that there is a widespread problem with many kinds of document that no longer work properly, I’ll be more inclined to say Apple is at fault. But as it stands, it just seems like ABBY has been producing bad PDFs.
saagarjha 6y ago
I’m sure Apple had much more time with ABBY than ABBY had with Big Sur ;)